 |
| Pastor Schiele was our mission group's contact at Grace Baptist Church. He made our lives so much easier! Thanks! |
Have you ever had a week when you are totally surrounded by teenagers in the sweltering heat doing manual labor and loving it? I have! I know that it doesn't sound like much fun but when you are doing it all for the glory of God and the fellowship of believers it really can be amazign!
This past week was our fourth mission trip with the youth of Villebrook Baptist Church. In order we have served in Springfield, MO; Springfield, MO; Memphis, TN; and now Kansas City, MO. I love youth and I love missions, and it is amazing to see the students that my husband has mentored in his 13 years of doing youth ministry that are now youth ministers themselves. Our group this year included three groups that were led by former "Jimmy kids".
For eight days, six groups from three different states came together for a total of about 90 people serving. We had everyone from infants to senior adults living together at Grace Baptist Church. I just have to stop for a second and say how grateful we are to Pastor Lavendar and Pastor Schiele for allowing us to invade their facilities and for being very gracious and accommadating to our group. If you don't know anything about Grace, it is in a pretty rough area in Kansas City. That in and of itself was definitely out of our kids comfort zones. Not to mention that it was uncomfortable because it was possibly the hottest week of the year! So we all bonded together in the midst of our discomforts.
Everyday, our teams would undertake three hours of morning service. During that time we divided into groups that did tutoring for elementary school children, teaching life skill classes at Ivanhoe Community Center, and gardening in a local park. Then we would all meet back at Grace for lunch.
In the afternoon we headed out for three more hours of service. This time our teams did a Daycamp at Macedonia Baptist Church, community revitalization with Ivanhoe, street witnessing around the KC Metro, and services projects for the people of the Kansas City Baptist Temple. I was pleasantly surprised at the consistently great attitudes our kids had--even when they were shoveling sewage in 100 degree heat. Once our work for the day was finished we headed to the YMCA for showers and back to Grace for supper and worship.
It made for some really long but really awesome days. I am happy to say that we saw four confirmed salvations during our time of service plus we planted many more seeds. Not to mention the changes that God did in the hearts of our students during this trip.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support as we undertook this great adventure.
